The effective management and control of digital content (e.g., electronic photographs, music, video and documents) is becoming increasingly important as the volume of such content proliferates at an exponential rate. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is typically refers to a number of technologies used to enforce pre-defined policies for controlling access to digital data or content. Typically, DRM handles the description, layering, analysis, evaluation, trading, monitoring and enforcement of usage restrictions that may accompany a specific instance (or item) of digital content.
A large number of DRM technologies are currently available to protect a variety of different types of digital content. For example, the Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open standard file format, developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated, of San Jose Calif., that provides a capability to restrict document printing.
Adobe Systems Inc. has further developed the Adobe® LiveCycle Policy Server™ software that enables the management and monitoring of business-critical electronic documents, and the application of policies to control access to, and use of, such documents. Similarly, Macrovision Corporation has developed a number of electronic copy prevention schemes that may be utilized to protect video and DVD digital content. Audio files purchased from many online stores (e.g., the iTunes Music Store of Apple Computer Corp.) are subject to various DRM schemes that limit the number of devices on which a particular audio file may be played. Similarly, producers of e-books utilize DRM to limit the number of computers on which an e-book may be viewed or even the number of times that the e-book may be viewed.